


Decompression

by jujubiest



Series: PoI Ficlets [2]
Category: Person of Interest (TV)
Genre: Character Study, Hurt Reese, Missing Scene, emotional Finch
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-09
Updated: 2014-10-09
Packaged: 2018-02-20 13:08:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 944
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2429975
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jujubiest/pseuds/jujubiest
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When John needs someone to get him out, get him <i>help,</i> Finch is fine. It's only after they're safely back in John's apartment that Finch starts to feel the strain.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Decompression

**Author's Note:**

> Set between the end of Number Crunch and the start of Super, a sort of missing-scene drabble of Harold bringing John home.

He doesn't begin to feel it until after.

After the fist-clenching, gut-curdling, teeth-grit-drive-faster-get-there-in-time terror.

After heaviness and blood, bundles of green paper people value so much strewn across a table in desperation, in demand.

After stitches and sweating and jumping at every sound until they’re wheeling through the door of John’s tiny apartment, there is quiet. Finally. And he really starts to feel it then.

Finch stops the wheelchair just inside the apartment. He pulls the door closed perhaps harder than necessary, twisting the lock into place as though it’s made him a vicious insult.

He turns to find John looking at him through eyes blurred with pain medication and exhaustion.

“Did the door do something wrong, Harold?” His voice is hoarse and even softer than usual, but still has that lilting satirical note that tells Finch he’s being laughed at. Finch shakes his head, disgusted and bewildered in nearly equal measure.

“A person who’s been through all you have in a single 24-hour period ought not to be able to crack jokes, Mr. Reese.” He says, his voice perhaps sharper than he meant it to be.

He feels as though someone’s stuck a key into his spine and turned, and turned, and turned until it stuck and would turn no more. He’s exhausted, shaky with the after-effects of an adrenaline spike, relieved beyond the telling of it and ravenously hungry. He needs a shower. And all of those things are completely unimportant because a handful of hours ago, John nearly died.

But he’s alive, and awake, gazing up at Finch from under heavy eyelids and _grinning._

Harold does not consider himself a violent person. In fact, he has never understood how humans can do such awful things to one another. But at present his own skin feels wrapped too tightly across his muscles and bones, and his entire body is just twitching for some loud, ostentatious form of motion or expression. He feels erratic, destructive, in a way that’s totally unfamiliar and not entirely unpleasant. He wants to throw something breakable at a wall and watch it smash into a thousand tiny pieces. He wants to find the person who put bullets in his friend, wrap his hands around their neck, and squeeze until they turn blue.

He’s fairly certain his relative lack of upper body strength and limited range of motion will not allow for either one, and it’s perhaps one of barely half a dozen times in the last two years that he has really, truly _hated_ his physical limitations.

“What’s on your mind, Harold?” John slurs, and Finch pulls himself out of his own head and back to the present.

“To be honest?” He says. “Dinner plates.”

John raises an eyebrow. “Dinner plates.” He sounds as though he doesn’t think Finch is in fact being honest.

“Yes,” he says, adopting a tone that is far too casual and matter-of-fact for the nonsensical confession. “I was just thinking how satisfying it would be to throw a dinner plate at a stone wall.”

“Sorry Harold,” John shrugs, wincing slightly at the movement. “No stone walls here.”

“Yes. Well.” Finch isn’t really listening. At the small sign of pain from John, he had rushed forward. He leans stiffly over John in his chair, intent on checking his bandage to make sure he hasn’t pulled open any stitches. He’s halfway through undoing the buttons on John’s shirt when John clears his throat and speaks.

“Finch? What are you doing?”

“Shh,” Finch says absently. “I just need to check your stitches. If you pull them loose we’ll have to take you back to Dr. Madini right away.”

 “Finch,” John says again, “I’m fine.”

And that’s it for whatever was left of Finch’s shattered nerves.

“You are not _fine,_ ” he bursts out, voice going high and hoarse, cracking in his anxiety. “You’re…you were almost—”

He can’t seem to put words together around this giant, swelling bubble in his throat, this band compressing his chest. He swears he feels some invisible hand trying one more time to turn that blasted key, wind him that extra millimeter till he snaps.

Finch was not made for this: getaway driving and emergency black market bullet removals in the city morgue. He feels most at home among information. Words, maps, lines of code. He likes working with his hands, but to create things. Move them. Figure them out. He's good at figuring out how things work. He prefers, usually, to be the pair of eyes behind a computer screen, a voice in the ear, deft fingers opening locked doors and sifting in the dark through secret pages. John is the man of action. John is the muscle, the fists, the beating heart.

That heart had almost stopped beating, and Finch never meant to do this, not again. The lesson had driven itself home painfully enough with Nathan: he can’t get attached, not to partners or assets. It’s dangerous. It renders him useless for the mission at hand.

John is looking at him, still tired and a bit nonplussed now.

“I’ll live,” he whispers, very gently.

“You’d better,” Finch whispers back. He finishes checking John’s bandages—no signs of pulled stitches, thank God—and buttons his shirt. Struggling to his feet, he moves to stand behind John’s wheelchair and rolls him carefully across the short distance to his narrow bed.

“You need rest,” he says. “Let’s get you out of that suit and into bed.”

John lifts his head and grins, eyes twinkling suggestively.

“Oh, for goodness’ sake,” Finch mutters. He turns away from John, resolutely ignoring the man’s throaty chuckle as he begins untucking the neatly made blanket and sheets.

**Author's Note:**

> Again, not sure how in character this is, particularly for Harold. He strikes me as the kind of person who not only disliked violence, but is loathe to employ it even when necessary. I can't imagine him actively desiring to do violence to someone...but there have been hints that there's a darker side to him, too, and I think that maybe if anything would make him understand that desire, it would be someone nearly killing one of the few people in the world he can almost trust.


End file.
